Letter: On Mozart; A German, Not Austrian, Composer

Published: January 11, 1992

To the Editor:

The "Imperfect Pitch" (Topics item, Dec. 26) attributed to The (London) Observer because of its 1791 obituary notice calling Mozart a "German composer" was more in tune with reality than its 1991 editors (who now call him an "Austrian composer") seem to realize. This is because Salzburg did not become part of Austria until years after Mozart's death, and the city had been bound by historical and ecclesiastical connections to Bavaria (in what we now call Germany) since the ninth century.

Furthermore, in Mozart's day most of the archdiocese of Salzburg, headed by the autonomous prince-archbishop, was still in Bavaria, not Austria. Remember, too, that Mozart's father came from Augsburg in today's southern Germany.

That Mozart considered himself a "German" is beyond question. In a letter of Aug. 17, 1782, written when he lived in Vienna, he refers to "Germany, my beloved fatherland -- of which I am proud, as you know." For him "Germany" was not a sovereign nation (since such did not yet exist), but rather the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire, which was to outlive Mozart by but a few years and included the duchy of Austria (of which he was not a subject, of course).

But even if Vienna was the capital of the duchy as well as of the Empire, people who lived there (and anywhere else in the duchy for that matter) didn't consider themselves "Austrian," a 19th-century concept born out of the creation of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.

The modern-day Salzburg public-relations machine has convinced the world that Salzburg, which Mozart loved to hate, is the "Mozart City." But it has apparently also hoodwinked the present editors of The Observer (and those of The New York Times), who corrected the date of Mozart's death in 1791, but then in 1991 got his "nationality" (if the term is applicable to Mozart at all) wrong! RAYMOND ERICKSON Flushing, Queens, Dec. 27, 1991 The writer is professor of music at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, CUNY.